Wonder Hlongwa
Thandeka Shabalala (16) lies on a stretcher at King Edward VIII Hospital in Durban, with a heavy brown blanket thrown over her body despite the heat.
She has travelled all the way from Pietermaritzburg. She is one of hundreds of patients who come for treatment at King Edward and instead either sleep on stretchers for a couple of nights or leave untreated.
The hospital has severe shortages of nursing staff, general assistants and messengers. But it has to cope with an influx of thousands of patients from different corners of the country’s most populated province.
Over the past two years at least 10 people have died at King Edward because of staff shortages.
Senior nurses complain they have only half the staff they need to perform their duties effectively. They are ignoring a call by the government to volunteer an extra two hours a day in an attempt to treat all the people who come seeking help.
Nurses say they already “slave” the entire working day because of the overwhelmingly high nurse-patient ratio.
“Our workers’ forum wrote a number of letters to the chief medical superintendent asking for a change in the admission system. We even sent them statistics on daily basis, detailing patients who have spent more than one night but who have not received treatment, and those who died on the stretchers,” said a nursing sister.
The outpatients department is the most crowded at King Edward, with more than 500 patients on daily basis. The dispensary has no seats for patients waiting for their medicines. Some lean against the wall, while others wait in passages nearby.
The overcrowding is not only caused by patients with serious ailments who require treatment at a central hospital like King Edward. Hundreds come from the surrounding townships with minor ailments that can be treated in a local clinic. They have their reasons for shunning the clinics.
“My child can’t eat, he’s got diarrhoea and sores next to his penis. I’m from Umlazi township, we have a clinic nearby but it doesn’t have medication,” said Pretty-Girl Zulu, mother of seven-month-old Memory.
Because of a shortage of hospital porters, patients have to be carried into the hospital by their relatives. And because of the shortage of stretchers and wheelchairs, a patient was seen being brought into the hospital in a supermarket trolley.